Episode 353: What It Means to Feel Better with Arianna Rebolini

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Written By Forever 35 Podcast

CW: This episode discusses depression and suicide 

Doree shares some of her sun protection style (think beekeeper) and Elise shares a story about her mysterious yard visitor. Then, they speak with author Arianna Rebolini about her latest book Better, what “better” really means when you have a history of depression and suicidal thoughts, her takeways on happiness and despair, and how the U.S. healthcare system, poverty, and mental health are all connected.

Photo Credit: Sylvie Rosokoff

Transcript

 

The transcript for this episode Ai generated.

Doree (00:10):

Hello and welcome to Forever 35, a podcast about the things we do to take care of ourselves. I'm Doree Shafrir.

Elise (00:16):

And I'm Elise Hu. And we are two friends who like to talk a lot about serums.

Doree (00:21):

We're indeed.

Elise (00:22):

And sunscreen.

Doree (00:23):

And sunscreen. We the sun's out love sunscreen, sun sun's out, buns out,

Elise (00:30):

Sun's out, buns out, sun's out, guns out. It's sunny for longer times. Now the days are longer, and this is one of my favorite times of the year, but it reminded us that we should probably be talking about sun protection. So we are in your inboxes with some of our favorite sun protection. If you already subscribe to the Forever 35 newsletter, Dory, you're very good at sun protection.

Doree (00:54):

What's so funny is one of my tennis teams that I'm a captain of is a weekday team. So they play during the week, and I didn't play this morning, but I went to their match and in the team WhatsApp, one of them was like, thank you, Dory, for coming out, all covered up to cheer us on.

Elise (01:14):

Dory looks like a beekeeper when she plays tennis.

Doree (01:19):

And I was interviewed by the strategist about my tennis style and I described my tennis style as beekeeper because I think they were looking for cute tennis clothes. And I was like, I don't look cute when I play. I'm just fully covered up. And I also have this chair that I bring to watch matches that has a canopy attached.

Elise (01:41):

Oh wow. Yeah. I hope you put that in the newsletter, Rex.

Doree (01:47):

Yes, I did put it in the newsletter. Rex.

Elise (01:50):

I'm in the market for one.

Doree (01:51):

Are you really?

Elise (01:52):

Yeah, because of soccer now I have a kid playing club soccer or travel ball as they call it, and I'm in the sun a lot and I feel like I need to really up my sideline game.

Doree (02:06):

I love this chair because it is also a rocking chair. It rocks a little bit. It's really comfortable and it has this canopy that blocks a lot of sun. So between my hat, my long sleeves, my long pants, and my canopy, I was pretty well covered.

Elise (02:25):

But crucial question, is the chair annoying to set up and take down?

Doree (02:31):

No, it's not. Okay, good. It just sort of folds up and then to undo it, you just sort of push it

Elise (02:37):

Open. Okay. Okay, good. I made that mistake with one of my recent new chair purchases

Doree (02:43):

Where

Elise (02:43):

I'm like, oh, it'll be so lightweight and so convenient. And then I realized that it's one of those chairs that you have to negotiate.

Doree (02:51):

You just insert rods and stuff. Yes, you have to insert rods. I don't want to insert rods for my chair. No rods must be inserted at any time

Elise (03:04):

With dorie's canopy chair.

Doree (03:06):

Yes, it is. If you don't subscribe to the newsletter, which you should, it is the GCI outdoor pod rocker outdoor rocking chair with Sunshade canopy

Elise (03:18):

Pod rocker. I love rocker. I also a pod rocker. It's a metaphor, it

Doree (03:23):

Looks like, looks like it's $80, so it's not a cheap chair, but in my opinion it is. Well worth it. Now, they also sell a non rocking canopy chair, but I can't speak to those.

Elise (03:38):

I can't imagine if you had the choice that you would choose the non rocking.

Doree (03:42):

Of course, a rocking is really comfortable.

Elise (03:47):

Oh, my other tail of the great outdoors, this has nothing to do with sun protection, but it's sort of on topic of it's getting warmer and all the creatures are out and there's more flies buzzing about suddenly in my backyard. So the other night, maybe for the first time ever, yes. I think for the first time ever, my younger two girls, so the second and third girls decide that they are going to be in cahoots and be sister besties because usually it's the oldest in the middle, and then the third one is the odd one out. But this week the younger two decided they wanted to have a sleepover together in the back house. So we have an a d additional dwelling unit, as they call 'em in southern California. It's not a phrase that I was used to having grown up in Texas. It's across the yard.

(04:35):

And the girls decided they wanted to sleep back there together. And I thought, I've never let them sleep back there together before, but it seems safe enough. They're not going to be in the same structure as me, but just across the yard. And so I let them do it and it lights out around eight. I don't hear anything from the back house. And around nine 30, Oscar who never barks, he has lots of problems, but barking is not one of them. Oscar starts barking at nine 30 and I go outside and he's barking mysteriously up at the shared fence between my neighbor and me, and I have no idea why. I don't see anything that he's barking at. I feel like maybe he's gone mad. I have no idea. He's just barking.

(05:24):

And in all nine months of his life and seven months that he's lived with us, he's barked maybe twice. So I have no idea what's going on and I decide, this is kind of spooky, I'm going to bring you in and crate you. I'm going to put you in your crate. Oscar's going down to bed. I don't really want to deal with the parking and I can't understand why. So I don't know what the deal is. Another hour and a half passes, it's about 11. So that's about my bedtime. And I had finished an episode of Apple TV's. Your friends and neighbors, everything was chill. Ava who is in the main house, she's asleep, and I go back upstairs. Rob's not here. So it's just me and the girls. And I hear screeching just like a high pitched squeal. It's like far enough away where I can't tell if it's Luna or if it's Issa, but I'm hearing some sort of squealing or screaming.

(06:19):

Oh no. And I'm like, oh no. Is it the railway killer? And at this point, if it is, isn't it too late for me to go back there? Right, right. I was like debating, do I go? Do I not? Not. Oh my God. So obviously for the safety of my children, I decide to brave the outdoors and go outside to see what's going on. And I look at the back house and none of the lights have come on. So it's pitch black. I I can't see through the windows. And the squealing has stopped once I'm in the backyard and I don't know what it is. I don't think it's Luna, because if it were, wouldn't I continue to hear something? It would make sense if she was still crying or lights had flipped on. This

Doree (07:08):

Is

Elise (07:09):

A weird mystery at this point, and I really don't, I'm sort of flummoxed and not sure what to do, but then I look up at the roof of the A DU and there's two possums that are scurrying around. They were in some sort of battle and I'm just seeing the silhouette of these creatures. No, in some sort of dance. I don't know if they're mating or they were in some violent fight, but those animals

Doree (07:42):

Voices. So that's what Oscar was barking at.

Elise (07:43):

Yes. So it all makes sense now because I didn't see what Oscar was barking at, but he was barking. And then the squealing, which sounded like it could have been a child squealing, hard to say, very high pitched. It must have been possums fighting or mating or I don't know what was going on in their world, but I cannot believe that that noise and especially these little feet that are running across the roof, did not wake the children.

Doree (08:15):

Wow.

Elise (08:16):

How did they sleep through that?

Doree (08:19):

Wow.

Elise (08:21):

The next morning they come in and they're like, we heard Oscar barking.

Doree (08:28):

Oh my God.

Elise (08:31):

They missed the whole drama in which I thought the railway killer came

Doree (08:35):

But

Elise (08:35):

Heard Oscar barking.

Doree (08:38):

Amazing. Wow. Okay. I will say that possums make BOGO insane.

Elise (08:49):

Why?

Doree (08:50):

I don't know. But there's something about possums in particular that I think just makes dogs go nuts.

Elise (08:58):

I wonder if there's some

Doree (08:58):

Sort of

Elise (08:59):

Enemies in a previous life.

Doree (09:00):

Yeah, I don't know. At night, we'll let him out in the yard because our yard is fenced and he usually will go outside, he'll pee. Maybe he'll wander around for a couple minutes and then he'll come back in. But sometimes he's on the hunt and we'll let him out the door and he just fucking bolts and runs to a spot. He'll be jumping up into bushes and we're like, oh, there's a possum. That's what he's always hunting. A possum

Elise (09:32):

That explains Oscar's strange behavior. I thought Oscar had gone mad. Yes.

Doree (09:36):

No, it's definitely the possum. There's something about possums that truly makes dogs go insane.

Elise (09:41):

Wow.

Doree (09:42):

If you are listening and you know anything about this, what is it about possums in particular that makes dogs go completely bonkers? Thank you.

Elise (09:55):

What a night. What a night. Alright. There's no good way to go from this story into our guests specifically, unfortunately, but we have a very good show for you today, a very enriching and deep and heartfelt conversation with the writer Ariana Rebolini.

Doree (10:13):

I've known Ariana for a really long time, probably like 12 years because we both worked at Buzzfeed, which we talk a little bit about on the show. Her new book is called Better, and I just want to give a little bit of a content warning here because the book is about suicide and kind of suicide's legacy in families and how she recovered from wanting to commit suicide. So if this is a sensitive topic for you, it might be one you want to skip. We don't really talk about it that much or go into great and gory detail, but it is something that we touch on and that is what her book is about. So just want to flag that. But otherwise, Ariana is a writer and editor, born and raised in New York. She was the book's editor of Buzzfeed News and her writing has been featured in the Atlantic, the Guardian Esquire Time, the Cut Vulture among other places.

(11:21):

She's a member of the National Book Critic Circle, and she also is the author with Katie Haney of the book Public Relations. She lives in Queens, New York with her husband, son, and two cats. And before we get to her, just a reminder, you can call or text us at seven eight one five nine one three. Email us at Far podcast gmail. Do we also have the aforementioned newsletter at Farber five podcast do com slash newsletter. And we are on Instagram at Forever 35 podcast. And also our Patreon is at patreon com slash forever five where we do a lot of bonus content. That's super fun. So check that out and we will be right back with Ariana.

Elise (12:06):

We'll be right back.

Doree (12:14):

Arianna, welcome to Forever 35. It's so great to see you.

Arianna Rebolini (12:18):

Thank you. It's so great to see you both

Doree (12:20):

And congrats on the publication of your book. We're talking to you a week after it came out, so I hope you had a good first week of publication.

Arianna Rebolini (12:31):

Thank you. It's been surreal. It's been very cool.

Doree (12:36):

Well, we start off by asking our guests about something they're doing these days to take care of themselves. So is there something you're doing right now that you would consider self-care?

Arianna Rebolini (12:50):

That is a very good question and something that I am actively wondering because I'm in the post book, they call it almost like a postpartum depression after the book comes out. I'm just spending a lot of time outside. I'm gardening. I would say gardening is something that I'm doing. We have a little tiny backyard in Queens and I have a little section of grass that I'm trying to bring flowers in, and I just like getting my hands dirty. Lovely. Getting dirt. Very Taurus.

Doree (13:26):

Oh, you're bone Taurus. As a fellow Taurus, I relate to this.

Arianna Rebolini (13:30):

Yeah. Yeah. I like getting the dirt under my nails.

Elise (13:34):

Love it. Love it. Yeah. Well, let's get a bit into the book. The latest book is a highly personal memoir called Better. It Explores Suicide including Your Own History with Wanting to Die. So before we get into some of the larger themes of it, just how are you doing? How's your morale? Give us a five

Arianna Rebolini (13:57):

Check. Yeah, I'm doing well actually. Yeah, I am. It's been such an interesting thing to work on this book for I guess almost eight years of the writing of it, seven years. And it very clearly became its own. I talk about how suicide and the tendency toward that is a self-destructive, a coping method that isn't really helping me and refusing to finish the book was becoming that. It was a way to stay in the head space and kind of afraid to let it go the same way it mimicked the way I was afraid to let go of all those pretty destructive coping methods. And so I'm so glad that the book is out there, but I'm also glad that I'm done with it. I feel really good and I have a lot of support and I'm doing a better job of accepting support. So yeah.

Doree (14:55):

Just to back up a little bit, can you just give our listeners sort of an overview of what the book is about? You mentioned in the author's note, I think even the essay that sort of led to the book, and I'd love for you to just talk a little bit about that and give people an idea of what the book is.

Arianna Rebolini (15:17):

In 2017, I had this sort of breakdown where I thought I was either going to kill myself or go to the hospital and I went to the hospital. And while I was there, this followed a lifetime of ups and downs of dealing with depression and suicidal thinking. And in high school, well, I mentioned in the prologue, I thought it had been high school when I had taken some pills and then going through my journals discovered it was much later. So at the hospital I decided, this is it. This is going to be my last, this is going to be my rock bottom. And I was in a really good relationship and I wanted to get my life started for real. And so when I left, I was like, I want to have a kid. I want to get married. I want to have a real job.

(16:03):

I am going to figure out how to keep this better. And so it started as kind of almost a research project. I was like, I'm going to read all these books from writers who had killed themselves, Plath Wolf, David Foster Wallace, and look for patterns and the way they were thinking and just, I'm an English major. I was like, I just want to dive in and analyze all this stuff. And I say in the book too, I don't know how deeply I believed in this, but I was committed to it. I think I really liked the idea of this. It's like it's a project because a project, I don't know. I didn't understand how to be good and healthy outside of some kind of work or some kind of project based thing.

(16:53):

And so that's how it began. But about a year after I left the hospital, my brother was hospitalized for his own suicidal depression and facing that, being on the other side of it, having read all this stuff and came up with these ideas about really heady things like, oh, we have to think about time differently. And you have to think about these versions of yourselves differently and seeing how theoretical ideas just fail in the face of someone who just really wants to die. It changed the course of the book. And so it became much more of looking at societal issues overlaps with that and bigger questions about why do people actually want to die and what does it mean to be healthy and recovered from a history of suicide.

Elise (17:42):

And ultimately, what did you find, how did doing all of this work and then living it not only yourself, also with your brother, how did it affect your own recovery and your understanding of recovery?

Arianna Rebolini (17:55):

Well, it's funny because I did have some moments where I was talking to my agent we hadn't sold yet, and I was like, how do I write a book where I, I'm actually, I don't think it better exists. You can't just have a book that's like, oh, whoops, sorry. No, if you have depression, that's it. You have it. My version of Living a Better Life is not obsessing and fearing that return, but also focusing on the psychological aspects and really focusing on the work of how to make the world better because those external factors have as much weight as the psychological factors. And I think that that's something that people really have a hard time grappling with.

Elise (18:42):

You get into the larger systems and the larger structures in all of this, which I think is really vital, this theme of doing more and being more productive or at least appearing externally successful and hitting certain milestones of adulthood. That's something I think a lot of us can relate to. And I'd love for you to just reflect on how it actually went for you to try and hustle your way out of feelings of despair or depression.

Arianna Rebolini (19:16):

Yeah, it's brutal. I don't, I do not have the personality, the discipline. I'm not the type of person, freelancing does not work well for me. And so the moment, the period of time that was immediately proceeding the hospital, that was a period of depression that I was actively fighting by working. I was like, this just means I need more pitches to go out. I need to be more disciplined. I need to wake up early and I need to do stretches. I really believed in systems to save me, and I do think that discipline and productivity have roles in mental wellness, but I was so fixated on them to my detriment, what would happen is I would set these goals for myself, I would fail them. And then instead of being like, okay, maybe I actually don't need to be this busy, maybe I don't need to be producing this much, I would go the other way and be like, okay, I actually need to really hunker down and do it even more. I need to be more disciplined and then would be shocked when I was even more depressed.

Elise (20:29):

Well, and there's something so hyper individualistic about that, right? It's a personal or moral failing on ourselves if we don't go harder.

Arianna Rebolini (20:39):

Absolutely. And I think that it's individualism, and I do think there's a fear and there's hubris, and this idea that I know what I need to do to fix myself. I'm not going to ask for help at least until I try everything. And then you're like, well, what's everything that means you'll never ask for help, because there's always something else you can try. I know we have a society that encourages that kind of individualism and success like that, but it was not working. Now,

Doree (21:10):

What was it like for you working at Buzzfeed two different times, and did you feel like your depression was exacerbated by your specific job at Buzzfeed? Was there something about Buzzfeed that was crazy making? This is kind of a leading question.

Arianna Rebolini (21:34):

You seem to have a little knowledge about this.

(21:38):

No, it, it's really sad when I think about Buzzfeed because my first time there, and I started in 2013, so pretty early and maybe the first two years, the most fun I have ever had at a job and probably will ever have. I left in 2017 to freelance and that didn't work. And then I came back in, I guess either, I think 2018 is when I came back to Buzzfeed to do the book's editing position. And for a few reasons, that job was harder and more crazy making one of them not buzzfeed's fault was my, it aligned with my idea of this is my real life job. I was on the news team, which is such a funny

(22:24):

Division that really held no meaning to anyone outside of Buzzfeed, but you probably remember there was a lot of competition, or not even just ego based things between, we called it buzzfeed.com versus Buzzfeed News. And so I was like, well, this is highbrow. I'm Buzzfeed News. This has the gravitas of the life I want going forward. And I think setting myself up for that, being, making some kind of difference in my life was my own issue and setting myself up to be disappointed. It was just more and more of being asked to do these things that were multiple jobs and then also always on the brink of always aware of layoffs happening, always afraid that was going to happen. And then I feel like the finale was once we got into the pandemic and just the coldness that overlapped with the news union, it was just that second tenure at Buzzfeed really allowed me to see a lot of the behind the scenes ugliness of how little management actually cared about us as humans. And it was disheartening, and it obviously made me very depressed, but it also made me really angry, which I think was important for me. Yeah,

Doree (23:54):

I have such complicated feelings about Buzzfeed also as someone who was management and then wasn't management. And

Arianna Rebolini (24:01):

I mean, I was management too for a while. So yeah. No,

Doree (24:06):

I related to a lot of what you said. Anyway, that's a whole other podcast.

Arianna Rebolini (24:11):

It should be one.

Doree (24:12):

I know. Well, remember when everyone was making those, why left buzzfeed videos? Oh, yeah.

Arianna Rebolini (24:19):

Yeah.

Elise (24:20):

Okay. Let's take a break and we will be right back. What strikes me about a lot of these conversations, and Ariana, you're not, the only guest that we've had on who's touched on this is just how economic precariousness and our wellbeing can really threaten our wellbeing just as a society and how that's happened to an entire generation. And you write about this so well too. So I'm curious what you think, given what you've been researching, what needs to be happening at a structural or systemic level to help all of us, because so many of our ambitions or our sense of security has been sacrificed at the altar of these profit-driven motives or profit driven entities over the last 10, 15 years especially.

Arianna Rebolini (25:23):

Well, so one of the most shocking things I found in researching, so first of all, globally basically universally poverty is linked to higher poverty is linked to higher suicide rates. It's just, it's a fact. But when you talk about what can we do to help that during COVID in the United States, you would think unemployment was up. We were all depressed and alone, and everyone thought that suicide was going to rise. But during the span of time where the financial welfare, we were getting higher money, more money back than usual in welfare, suicide went down. People who relied on welfare benefits were actually getting more during that time because of COVID. And so poverty rates went down and so did suicide rates even during that terrible time. And so I think that probably one of the most important things we could do is increase social welfare.

(26:26):

I think that worrying about money, and we have to work not only for survival for money, but also for health insurance. All of these things are linked. Our survival is linked to our ability to work, and that is such an unhealthy, dangerous way to live. And so I think anything we can do as a society to make work less linked to our actual just survival and life is important. And I really had a hard time with that, especially I started meeting communists and people who had different ways of thinking in my twenties, so many people do. And it just broke my brain. I was like, what do you mean you think someone can live without having a job? I was like, that is so dangerous and insane to me. And I think if you sit with it for a little bit, you can kind of get past those initial fears. And I don't think that people would do nothing. And if someone wanted to do nothing, fine, but people like to work. People get meaning from work, especially in a situation where work is respectful and they feel good about the work they're doing. I think we just have so much fear about living in a different way and having society work in a different way that we immediately are like, that can't be possible. And I think it is possible and could be so much better.

Doree (27:46):

Well, let's talk about the sort of health insurance for-profit centered healthcare morass that you sort of find yourself in. And it starts from the very beginning of the book where you are talking about the debt that you're in. And part of it is because of the checks that are supposed to be for your therapist. And then also you talk a lot about not being able to find therapists who take insurance and it comes up a lot and which hospital you're able to go to. I'm just wondering what you see as the connection between the profit centered healthcare system and poverty and suicide. How are these inextricably linked for people?

Arianna Rebolini (28:44):

Well, it's so interesting to me because health insurance in America is just the worst. The health system in America is just one of the worst. In the wealthy world. We pay more for our healthcare and we are the least healthy. And this comes from one of the books that I referenced a lot that was really helpful is deaths of despair and the future of capitalism. So these are capitalists who are like, we believe in that, but also America does healthcare wrong in every possible way. So not only are they when you have health insurance, they're failing you because they make it really difficult to get mental health care. So they basically kind of bully therapists, mental healthcare providers out of the system because they make their lives really difficult. They make it really difficult for providers to get claims approved. They pay them very little. I mean, I could go for hours and I barely understand how health insurance works, but basically they pay the doctors, but they'll pay therapists much lower than they pay a medical doctor.

(29:59):

So then those therapists end up not being in, they don't take insurance and we're left doing reimbursements. It's a mess. And then on top of that, the system itself is the reason is one of the biggest reasons that we are in poverty, that people are struggling with money because health insurance that is linked to our work leads to lower wages because then employers have to pay for whatever more benefits, how much they cover. Exactly. And we're also paying for insurance and then also paying for deductibles and everything on top of that. And so it keeps us in higher levels of poverty, or at least in financial, like you said, precariousness, it's causing the conditions that lead to depression and suicide and then also failing to help you out of it, which is their job is to help you link you to mental health care. And it's failing on that level too. So I think it's deeply connected.

Elise (30:55):

Yeah.

Arianna Rebolini (30:56):

Yeah.

Elise (30:57):

You make the case that sometimes wanting to die is completely rational if you have been in this cycle of either poverty or getting denied the healthcare that you need or your family members need.

Arianna Rebolini (31:13):

Yeah, absolutely.

Elise (31:15):

What changed for you once you saw things this way?

Arianna Rebolini (31:20):

I got a lot angrier. It's funny, when I was younger, I think we were so scared, or at least I was so scared of anger and I used to be like, yeah, I don't know. I'm pretty chill. I don't think I really get angry. This, I am sure there's some kind of in there, some kind of internalized misogyny too, I'm sure. But I think anger is so useful and really empowering and seeing these links and then seeing it as someone who had been told and believed for so long that this is an illness. You just have to find the right meds. And I absolutely believe that that is a factor. I'm not saying go off your meds. I take meds and I am in therapy, but it's multifaceted. And so seeing those other aspects of what makes a person suicidal made me really angry and then also energized. And I think that it also made me feel hopeful in that I think I see a lot of people being very angry, and these are things, I mean, we don't really know. We're still figuring out the psychology of it, but we can change society. That's an easy change. I mean, unquote, easy. It's a clear answer. It's a clearer thing.

(32:35):

And so being able to focus on that and focus on that work and out what I can do in my life to work towards those changes while I'm also figuring out the psychology stuff for myself in the background, it just made it less scary. It made depression less scary for me.

Doree (32:54):

It seems like you've spent a lot of time analyzing and exploring happiness and despair, and I'm wondering if you have any takeaways for the rest of us about just how to feel better.

Arianna Rebolini (33:08):

I think it's so funny. I'm like, this is an answer that this is a question that I should prepare better answer to. I never have a satisfying answer because it's so up and down.

(33:20):

I think the best thing you can do is meditate, honestly. Work on not analyzing your feelings and thoughts because I think we get into a place where we are trying to judge how happy we are, could we be happier? What's making me happy? How do I duplicate this? What's making me sad? All these things. And I really feel like we are prodding, if you prod your wellness to really see taking an idea of being like, is it optimal? Am I optimizing my wellness? You're going to find something to be unhappy with. And so I think easier said than done, but I think the best thing you can do is just, and I'm terrible at meditating. I say that as if I do it. I'm like, do it. Join me. I do it maybe once a week and I'm awful at it. Awful at it. But if you can practice feeling something and then just letting it slide. If I feel like, oh, God, if I feel that instinctive, I'm still unlearning the suicide as any kind of reaction to any bad thing happening. Like, oh, I could do that. It's a knee-jerk reaction and not give that thought weight to not give your thoughts. Weight I think is really, really important.

Doree (34:33):

You're the first guest to bring up meditation. I hate

Arianna Rebolini (34:37):

Meditating. I'm not good at it, but I know it's important.

Doree (34:42):

Right, I know. And I'm always like, yeah, I should do that. It's great. It's great.

Arianna Rebolini (34:50):

It's great. And so hard.

Elise (34:51):

Yeah. Well, I mean, it's a discipline like everything else. I also think exercising every day is hard. So it's that kind of idea. So before we let you go, Ariana, you're a big book lover and a former books editor, so I'm curious what you're reading. What have you read lately that you want to give a shout to?

Arianna Rebolini (35:12):

Yeah, I would love to shout out my friend Shane. Terry. She has a book that just came out. It's a short book. It's unbelievable. It's called Leave a Postpartum Account, maybe. I think it's called Leave. And we were writing these books at the same time. We had just met, we did a nanny share. We were joined on Park Slope Parents.

(35:33):

Yeah, they're like, you guys have babies coming out in July. And so we met up and we did a nanny share, neither of us knowing what we were going through, and it's just about her. She suffered a, I think a third degree tear during labor. I don't know if that's meaningful to yikes. I knew nothing about it. It's awful. And she writes so frankly about what that meant to her, how she didn't know anything about this. My favorite blurb about it is this book pretends to be about birth, but it's actually about death and it's really good. It's really good. Beautiful writer.

Elise (36:08):

Okay.

Arianna Rebolini (36:09):

Lighter and more fun. I'm reading a book right now that I like called Butter, and it's, I say lighter, but it's like about a Japanese serial killer, but it's like it's a fiction thriller, Eddie, not death recommendation. See, I'm like, thrillers are fun though. Okay. Yes. No, let me think about this. Okay, Jeff Weiss, his book was very fun recently waiting for Britney Spears, and it's like a fictional Yes. That one's, especially if you lived through it. Really good about this. It's like an auto fiction, a tabloid writer named Jeff Weiss, but not Jeff Weiss, whose job becomes following pretty spears. And it's like a lot of energy, high energy.

(36:58):

And I'm going to do one more because I just thought of it for it. Jeanie Thornton, because I'm like, because that one could be depressing too. I read depressing books. This is a problem. Jeanie Thornton, maybe it's just Jean, and I apologize if I'm getting her name wrong. She has an amazing novel out right now called a SL, and she's a fantastic trans writer. Summer fun was her first, one of my favorite books of all time. And this is about teen game coders in the eighties, early internet. And so cool. It's really fun, really good stuff about friendship and if you love old school tech, that kind of stuff, it's good.

Elise (37:34):

Fantastic. Thank you for those.

Doree (37:38):

Ariana, where can our listeners find you if they want to follow along with your work?

Arianna Rebolini (37:44):

I am on Instagram. That's kind of where I'm most active actually. So just Ariana Reini back when I feel like underscores were a big thing for a while and I have a very infrequent that I'm trying to get better at newsletter called Reading Habits, and you can find that on my website@arianareini.com. But those are the two main ways. Yeah.

Doree (38:06):

Amazing. Thank you so much. It was really great to get to catch up with you and read your book, which I really loved. So thank you.

Arianna Rebolini (38:14):

Thank you so much. Thank you for having me. It was great to chat.

Doree (38:20):

It's always fun for me to talk to people that I knew from buzzfeed because it was such a weird shared experience that we all had. You were all intex together

Elise (38:33):

At the same time

Doree (38:36):

And everyone has kind of gone on to do really interesting different things

Arianna Rebolini (38:41):

For sure.

Doree (38:42):

So yeah, it's just kind of cool

Elise (38:47):

Intention time.

Doree (38:49):

It is intention time. Elise,

Elise (38:52):

What was your intention last week? Remind me.

Doree (38:55):

My intention last week was just sort of birthday stuff and I actually feel like thanks in large part to you. The birthday stuff is feeling pretty good. You very kindly offered to throw me a birthday dinner and then I was like, how about a party at your house? Happy to. But I'm like, great with trivia, so called on my old friend Ari, who runs a company called Superscript Trivia, who's great. He will do trivia for you in person if you're in Los Angeles. And he'll also do trivia on Zoom, which we did with him a couple of times during the pandemic. And it was super fun. So Ari is coming to do some trivia

Elise (39:46):

And I've been wanting to attend one of his trivia nights. Anyway, I missed your trivia night last time you had

Doree (39:52):

One. So

Elise (39:54):

I'm excited. I'm super excited.

Doree (39:56):

And as I said to Elise, we are going to see who my true friends are because Elise lives on the west side. And if you know anything about Los Angeles people who live on the east side, they don't willingly go to the West side very often

Elise (40:10):

And vice versa. Yeah, vice versa and vice versa. Vice.

Doree (40:12):

So we're going to see which of my friends is willing to make the trek to the west side. See, now everybody

Elise (40:19):

Feels called out. Yeah. Now you called them out on the podcast.

Doree (40:23):

They don't actually know that my birthday invite was truly a friendship test. To be fair, I do have some West Side friends, and if they don't show up, well then they're dead to me. I'm just kidding. So I'm excited about that.

Elise (40:37):

What about this week?

Doree (40:38):

I feel like this has been a periodic intention for a while. It comes up every so often, but now I went through Henry's clothes recently and I have a new pile of Henry's clothes to get rid of and I need to just get rid of them. That will mean going through and seeing if there's anything. He's so hard on his clothes that selling his old clothes gets kind of tough because they're all stained. But I've had success giving them away on buy nothing by being like, Hey, these are clothes for your kid at preschool. These are clothes

Elise (41:15):

For your

Doree (41:15):

Kid to get messy in. And there's always someone who's willing to take a bag of clothes. That's great.

Elise (41:22):

That's great.

Doree (41:22):

I think that that will be what happens. Last week you were going to do something with ClassPass.

Elise (41:29):

Oh, that's right. I was going to actually use it and go to some classes. How did that I did. I did do it, except the problem with not exercising for a week and a half and then suddenly going really hard and taking a very difficult mega former class or something is that after you do it, you're sore for two or three days. So then you're out of commission after that one class. So that happened to me. Now I'm in that cycle of my glutes hurt because I had to fire those muscles.

Doree (41:58):

Totally. This happened to me also.

Elise (42:01):

So here I am back at Square one, not using enough of my class pass hours. I think class passes nationwide though, so I might be able to sneak into a class in New York. I do have some. So

Doree (42:11):

Elise, I used to do this back in the day when I was a very early ClassPass user, and they used to, ClassPass used to be the most amazing deal. I think when they first launched, it was something like $50 a month for unlimited classes. People, they would take five PIL classes a day. Anyway, that was also, that coincided with the period of my life where I was traveling to New York a lot for work and I would always take classes there. And in fact, I took a couple classes at the Peloton studio, the old Peloton studio on until 23rd Street, because they were on class pass. No one really knew what they were. There would be like a hundred people working out from home during the class. It was just like another spin studio. The classes weren't even full. And now those classes are still on my profile. So if you, I go to my profile, I have a few classes from 2015 with Cody Rigsby. Wow. They all became stars. This guy who taught Spin. Totally. But yes, you can totally use ClassPass in New York. And that was something that I used to do all the time, and it was a super great way to work out while you were traveling. So I highly recommend that.

Elise (43:27):

I'll set that as my intention, then try Wonderful. Try and exercise in New York.

Doree (43:32):

Great. I love that. Alright, everybody, thank you so much for listening. Just a reminder that February 35 is hosted and produced by me, Doree Shafrir and Elise Hu, and produced and edited by Samee Junio. Sami Reed is our project manager and our network partner is Acast. Thanks everyone for listening.

Elise (43:49):

Talk to you next time.

Doree (43:50):

Bye.

 
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